Scrivener for Writing

ScrivenerIf you are a visually-oriented person, I think you will find Scrivener especially useful. Scrivener allows you to split up each chapter into sections, and also has another viewing option where you can see each chapter section as an index card on a corkboard. I experimented with having the corkboard have a summary of each section, or having notes about which tags I was going to use for each section. You can move the sections around easily by dragging them, thus making your order very fluid. You can also import existing Word documents.

Above is an example of using the note card layout to summarize my thoughts or brainstorm about each subsection of my chapter. You can also see how I have my chapters on the left, with each subsection. You can collapse this so you only see the chapter headings and not the subsections, or hide it entirely. I like to leave it visible so that I have a sense of the overall outline of the dissertation as I’m working on a particular section.

Above is an example of using each subsection note card to start to list the tags I should look for in DEVONthink to write each section.

In my case, I had Word documents with my interview notes, since I did oral history work. So those interviews are all in Scrivener, and I could have a split screen when I wanted to integrate those, where half the screen was my interview notes and half was my chapter section in progress.

I also often had a split screen between two different sections of a chapter, or one section of one chapter and then a section of a different chapter. I found this very helpful to be able to compare or to move a paragraph from one section to another.

Scrivener also has a really nice composition mode that goes full screen, which minimizes distraction from everything else you may have open on your computer. Everything you do in Scrivener is fully exportable into Word documents, or view everything as one continuous document within Scrivener. Also, rather than saving a million different drafts of your writing, you can use Scrivener’s “snapshot” feature. You can even title each snapshot. This preserves different versions without cluttering your desktop, and Scrivener can even compare versions for you. So, my general tactic has been to organize my sources first according to the logic of the archive, then according to my own logic. I then use these terms and clusters of terms to figure out the structure of my argument, and the sub-sections of each chapter. Then as I write each section I consult the documents tagged with the term that corresponds to the section. This has allowed me to break things down into workable chunks, that I can even feel like I’m making progress if I have just an hour or two to write. The idea of a large time commitment is another advantage to breaking things down. Often we feel as though we need a whole uninterrupted day to write. Using programs like DEVONthink and Scrivener helps us realize we can effectively use even smaller chunks of time. I’d like to return to the idea of abundance that I started out with in my section on DEVONthink: an abundance of sources. We also have an abundance of tools to help us. My advice about this is to pick a few, and use them, learn the ins and outs of them, and stick to them. It does you no good to sort of try and sort of leave a few different systems. I don’t know much about other database management software, because I picked one and I use it. At least when you’re starting out, being loyal to your technology, and perhaps even monogamous about it, will reap rewards. I also want to remind you of what I said earlier, that I started from zero in terms of my knowledge of this all. There is a lower barrier to entry than you may think. I hope I’ve helped convince you of that.